New review with X Vario

[Guytou]

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A new recent experiment on the ground with LeicaX Vario. I did not know this review :

 

Eugene Fratkin Photo Blog: Leica X Vario review

 

That is interesting and the author seems to give aconstructive and neutral opinion.

The few design defects announced here are now known of all.

The excellent quality of the zoom is as well real, as the beautiful images presented show it.

 

 

Guy

[Keith (M)]

Thanks for the link. An interesting article. When it comes to image quality, he writes:-

 

The rendering of images was very, very good. Only adjustments I had to make is increase sharpness setting - which, perhaps, would not be necessary in absence anti-aliasing filter. Other than that, in many instances I was not able to improve on what out-of-the camera JPG looked like, despite efforts to do so in Lightroom.

 

All of the images in his review are very punchy colour-wise, which is quite different to my out-of-camera .dng's when imported into LR5.5 (no specific X-Vario profile listed). They are very definitely lacking punch compared with the out-of-camera .jpg's. How do you find your .dng's? Do you need to make considerable adjustments?

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[wda]

Keith, I do not use jpegs, so my comparison is limited to the version shown on the camera's LCD. Neither to I use any special presets in LR. I pay special attention to colour fidelity by using a grey card for any scene other than bright sunny conditions in the UK. The correction is only slight, but it is significant where colour accuracy is important, for flowers and indoor scenes for example.

 

Once I have determined my 'keepers' I fine tune them in LR, usually individually, or in bulk when appropriate. Pre -conversion sharpening (from DNG) is also beneficial. I use the ALT key to show clipping while adjusting three of the four sliders. How much is a personal choice. Overall I find LR does an excellent job, even when reprocessing, retrospectively, much older files which used earlier standards of LR processing. I never stop learning how to get the best from Lightroom.

[colonel]

One of the key sales points of Leica is image quality

 

I was reminded of that recently going back shooting with an M9 and a 35mm Summarit and 50mm Summilux ASPH, how the images blew me away in a way that I don't get from other brands. Yes a 2nd hand M9 is more expensive then most other modern super specified mirror-less solutions but it is still the IQ king with Leica lenses in my world

 

I really think the signature of the XV's lens is something special and gives the camera a kick.

 

I have read many reviews where they say something like "well on paper it seems overpriced but when you see the images you have to smile" ......

[shree108]

I wonder if the images in this review were from raw files? And were they post processed? Probably so! What is anyone's opinion on this? I couldn't tell anywhere from this review if the files were out of Camera JPEG's or raw files.

Gar